Stealing - Margaret Verble - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Margaret Verble

GENRE: Historical Literary Fiction

RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A brilliant topic that the book does only some justice to. I would have loved this had it fulfilled the potential it had. The writing style didn’t make things easy. STRONG triggers for child sexual abuse.

Story Synopsis:

Kit Crockett, a Cherokee child, is currently living in a Christian boarding school. Through her secret journal, she tells us about her past and her present.

About four years ago, Kit was living with her father. Her mother having recently died, Kit and her father, though close, struggled to communicate through their grief. Kit’s new neighbour Bella ends up becoming a strong supportive figure in the young girl’s life.

How did the circumstances change such that Kit ended up in the boarding school all alone?

The book comes to us in the first person perspective of Kit, through her journal entries.

Note: If you want to read the book, don’t read the Goodreads blurb!

Where the book worked for me:

😍 A book about a Cherokee girl written by a Cherokee author. Representation well taken care of! I was surprised to discover how Native Americans also have their own prejudices about “Civilised Tribes” and “Wild Indians”.

😍 The first half of the story is much streamlined, despite the jumps in time.

😍 Many scenes between Bella and Kit won my heart. I also loved how Kit was written as an independent girl and her dad as an involved father. His portrayal helped beat the clichéd depiction of single dads in fiction who are usually either overprotective or abusive.

😍 The book throws a powerful spotlight on the forced (explicit or implicit) conversions of the indigenous natives to Christianity. Nothing is as heinous as treating fellow humans as less than oneself just because they believe in a different greater power. As a Christian, I find such scenes simultaneously depressing and infuriating, but that doesn't take away from the truth of the brutalities that have been wrought in the name of God and religion.

😍 This is the kind of book that will stay in your head long after the last page. The emotions and the concern for the character lingers in your head and heart.

Where the book left me with mixed feelings:

😐 Having Kit as the first person narrator sounds like a wonderful idea but ends up with a patchy result. I was initially reminded of Scout’s narration in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, where a child’s voice is put to brilliant use in bringing to us difficult social issues. Unfortunately, that promise fell by the wayside. Kit’s innocence helps us see things from a child’s perspective, thereby diluting some of the horrors (though not all of them.) However, she is an unreliable narrator through her habit of revealing only partial truths. There are so many things that could have been set right had Kit just opened her mouth at the right time. Moreover, her habit of random foreshadowing spoils many of the upcoming surprises and shocks.

😐 The child's voice isn't consistent. At first, I thought that because the book was written in flashback, the current age of the writer would give her added insights into her past. But this turned out to be the wrong assumption. There are many places where Kit spoke as a child would, but sometimes, she sounded like an adult. At times, she understood even complex words that most eleven-year-olds wouldn’t know, and at other times, she couldn’t understand a simpler word.

😐 The ending is somewhat open-ended. I think its interpretation will be quite dependent on readers, as to whether they want to consider it hopeful or abrupt. To my eyes, it felt very uncertain as we don’t even come to know who was reading Kit’s journals.

Where the book could have worked better for me:

😓 The blurb promised me a book about an Indian girl who has been removed from her family and sent to a Christian boarding school. As such, I had assumed the child’s life at school to be the primary focus of the book. But somehow, the school takes a secondary place, with the main focus being on Kit’s flashbacks. There is no smooth transition between her home life to her boarding days.

😓 Kit has a habit of going off into tangents in her journal. She jumps around from topic to topic and branches out even in between a memory. This might be authentic to how we speak in real life, but it sure makes comprehension difficult while reading. The book isn’t easy reading because of this creative decision.

😓 There is no time reference in the content. Had the blurb not mentioned the time period as being the 1950s, I wouldn’t have known where the place the story except that it would have been historical in some way.

😓 Whoever wrote the Goodreads blurb misunderstood the assignment big time. What we have in that section isn’t a blurb but a summary of THE ENTIRE BOOK, including the ending. What the heck!

😓 This might not be an issue for all readers, but the details of the sexual abuse were much beyond my tolerance level. Child sexual abuse is a strong trigger for me, and this book went into too much detail. I had to compel myself to continue through those scenes. Also, the graphic nature caught me unawares because up until that point, the writing had been pretty tame.

I floundered with my rating for a long time. After all, how can one not recommend a book that sheds light on such a horrifying part of history? However, every published work needs to be rated as a book and not for its theme alone. The content covers a difficult and relevant topic, so the intent deserves 5 stars. But the haphazard writing, especially in the second half, and the greater stress on Kit’s personal thoughts than on the events in the boarding school left me somewhat dissatisfied. I’d still recommend it, but mainly for the thought behind the words.

My thanks to Mariner Books and NetGalley for the DRC of “Stealing”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.